S is for a Second Look

 

April marks the 15th anniversary of my blog, so during the A-Z blogging challenge, I will be sharing previous posts from over 2,100 I have written.

I faithfully did Second Look posts every week for years. During this time, I would take a look around my yard and record what I saw. We had 2 acres with many established beds and some wild areas. I loved exploring every week and learned so much about bugs, plants, and animals that visited our yard. I tried continuing the practice when I moved here, but our yard is smaller and tamer than before, so I didn't keep it up. Maybe I should try again.

Below is the post that started it all. This was written in April 2011 and was the second post I ever wrote.

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A Second Look

  

Spring has sprung!  The flowers are emerging from the ground. The pollen is dropping from trees. Plentiful April showers are determined to bring May flowers.

Spring was an enchanted time for my children when we first moved to the four-season climate that we live in now. Up until this point in their lives, they had lived along the Gulf Coast, where the seasons were marked by whether or not you wore a light jacket or were drenched in sweat. The emergence of the crocus, the blooming of the daffodils, and the sprouting of new green leaves were things they had never seen before.  When they came home from school, they would call me out into the yard, and we would go on a treasure hunt to find what new flowers were blooming. It was an exciting time for all as we got to know our new surroundings. This excitement lasted all summer that first year. 

Then, as time wore on and the weeds seemed to be encroaching menacingly on our beautiful flowers, our emphasis changed. We began to notice the weeds more than the flowers. The kids got more interested in video games than plants, and the names that I taught them of the colorful blooming flora in the beginning became the yellow one and the purple one. In other words, our enchantment was gone. Spring moved into the background as all things seem to do after a while.

Then this Spring, we had a taste of that excitement again. While cutting daffodils to bring inside, we discovered that instead of just some white ones and some yellow ones, we actually had 6 different varieties. Who knew? With the second look at the daffodils, we noticed other things growing around them. We noticed which ones bloomed early and which ones were just budding. We noticed which plants the deer had been nibbling on. We noticed the birds. Wow! There's a lot of activity going on outside this time of year if you take the time to notice.

It may not last long, but for just a little while, we were all like the young kids my sons were that first year. I hope we can remember to take a second look at things around us, then and again. Who knows what we'll find?

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But Wait There's More!

A Second Look around my yard at what's new.

First up is the rainbow we saw. Ward said that he thought it was a double rainbow. I didn't see a double one.

The azaleas have bloomed. If you look closely at the next pictures,
 you can see I took them just after it stopped raining.

Azalea

Amsonia

Cherry laural

Lily of the Valley

Iris

Dogwood

Azaleas

Chickadee nest. No eggs yet.

Weather vane on top of our garage.
 Bless asked for a picture, and I finally remembered to take one.

Until next time...

R is for Reasonings

April marks the 15th anniversary of my blog, so during the A-Z blogging challenge, I will be sharing previous posts from over 2,100 I have written.

Over the years, I have shared stories about Wally and Theo when they were young. I found a series of posts I did called The Reasonings of Wally. Below are a couple of them from 2012 and 2013.

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The Reasonings of Wally--Alaska

This happened when Wally was four years old.

Ward and I came home from work and went upstairs with Theo. He sat quietly on the floor, looking at a book, while we changed our clothes and discussed how our days had gone. Soon we went downstairs to join Wally, who was watching Sesame Street. Theo toddled in front of us, and when he reached the kitchen floor, his feet slid out from under him, and I heard a loud crack as his head hit the floor. That was soon followed by loud crying. As I went to see if he was hurt, I slipped too, but fortunately didn't go all the way down. We both had slipped on a wet floor, and luckily, Theo was not badly hurt.

As it turns out, Wally was no longer watching Sesame Street. He was standing in the middle of the family room (next to the kitchen) with the garden hose in his hand, spewing water everywhere. At that point, Ward and I just about lost it. Trying to get control of the situation, I immediately sent Wally to his room and told him to get on his bed and not move until we came to talk to him. Next, while Ward took the hose outside and turned off the water, I dried off Theo and put him in his high chair to keep him out of the way. And then we began the long task of trying to clean up the water. There was about 1/4" of water on the tile floors, and the carpets next to them were soaked. The whole drying process actually took days, but after an hour or so, we had most of the water sopped up.

Then, to deal with Wally. We still found him on his bed. He knew that we were not happy and was afraid to move. After a few sentences about the danger of wet floors and the problems that come with wet carpets, we asked the question we had been wondering about the most.

"Wally, what were you thinking?"
He slowly replied. "Well, my good mind was on vacation in Alaska, and my bad mind said, 'Do it, do it. It will be fun.'"

And there you have it. The reasoning of a four-year-old Wally.

Note: Recently, I was recounting this story to a friend, and she wondered how Wally got the hose if the doors were locked. I just laughed because both of my kids were escape artists.

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Reasonings of Wally

or The Logic of the Young

A conversation with a young Wally.

"Wally, I see you were eating ice cream again without asking first. This has been happening too much lately. I am worried about your lack of willpower."

"Mama, my willpower is usually very good. Except when I get caught."

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Until next time...

 

Q is for Quilts

 

April marks the 15th anniversary of my blog, so during the A-Z blogging challenge, I will be sharing previous posts from over 2,100 I have written.

I wrote this post about quilts in July 2013. I have written other posts about quilts since then, especially on the Barn Quilt Trails we have done. Also, an update on the quilt I was working on when I wrote this. I still haven't finished it. :)

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Quilts

Quilts from museum exhibit

I love quilts. So when the neighborhood museum opened its quilts exhibit, I hurried in to see it. On display were many quilts made by local quilters. Some of the quilts were old, and some were new, but all of them were beautiful.

 As I was perusing the exhibit, I thought about the quilts I grew up with. I had one with a flannel backing for the winter and a lighter-weight one for the summer. I slept with one of those two quilts every night for years. They were made by my grandmother for me, and all of the work was done by hand. However, they looked different than the quilts I was seeing in the exhibit, as neither one of my quilts had a particular pattern with regard to color or shape. My grandmother used whatever inexpensive source of fabric she could find, often from old clothes, whether or not they matched. Those quilts were very representative of much of the way my family was (is)--very practical.

I also remembered another quilt of my youth--one that I started as a teenager using squares of fabric cut from old jeans that I had. I pieced several squares together, but never got much further than that until a couple of years ago, when I got it out and decided that I was going to finish it. I got additional fabric and made it big enough to fit a twin bed. However, I ran out of steam. Maybe someday I will finish it. In the meantime, I like to look at it and remember the different jeans that are represented and what was going on in my life when I wore them.

Now, I have a new quilt interest--barn quilts. These are large quilt squares painted on wood and hung on the side of barns or other outdoor structures. I see them occasionally in my travels, and it's always fun to find them. Also, Uncle Billy has started to make them, and if I can figure out how to hang one, he will make one for me.

Did I mention I love quilts? See some of them below.

Part of the quilt exhibit at my local museum.

Quilts made for me by my grandmother. Left: Winter, Right: Summer

Lucy checking out my in-progress quilt.

Some of Uncle Billy's Barn Quilts.
(Patterns in a clockwise direction: Lemon Star, Bear Paw, Rolling Star) 

Another one of Uncle Billy's Barn Quilts. (Pattern: Indian Maze)
 (Picture from Shelley at Intermittent Farm Report.)

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Until next time.....

P is for Paragrapher's Reveries

 

April marks the 15th anniversary of my blog, so during the A-Z blogging challenge, I will be sharing previous posts from over 2,100 I have written.

Back in July 2012, when my blog was just a little over a year old, I posted about an old book I found, The Paragrapher's Reverie by Mary Wilson Little. I do remember the book, but I haven't seen it in years. I wonder if I still have it?

At the very least, I still have the post I wrote about it. Here it is.

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Everything old is new again.

Recently, I was looking through a box of old books and found one that caught my eye, A Paragrapher's Reveries by Mary Wilson Little. The book was published in 1904 and is full of pithy little sayings. I wasn't sure what a paragrapher was; however, I learned that it was a person who wrote paragraphs or fillers for newspapers. I also found that what I thought was an obscure book was available in many different formats and sold practically everywhere. This made reading the yellowed pages from an original copy even more interesting to me

Here are a few fillers copied from the book. Some of them may seem outdated, and some of them are very applicable today, over 100 years later. I'll leave it to you to decide which is which.

--The penalty of success is to be bored by the attentions of people who formerly snubbed you.

--The woman who sits up and cries because her husband is kept very late at the lodge doesn't bring him home any sooner, and only makes her nose as red as his.

--Quilting bees are going out of fashion. The women who can sew are dying of old age.

--Jack Frost makes a capital artist, but his pictures lack warmth.

--It's difficult to see why lace should be so expensive. It is mostly holes, and holes are not expensive.

--The pain caused by a bee sting can be instantly relieved by jumping into a mud puddle.

--In the trials of the canning season, preserve your temper when you can.

--Happiness is the well-balanced combination of love, labor, and luck.

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Until next time...

O is for Outdoors

April marks the 15th anniversary of my blog, so during the A-Z blogging challenge, I will be sharing previous posts from over 2,100 I have written.

Ward and I like to hike and just, in general, be outside. (Well, I'm more of a fair-weather outdoor enthusiast.) I often share here when we've had a nature outing. This post was in October 2023, when cold weather was encroaching on our pleasant days. 

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Outdoor Amble Ramble

Maine isn't the only place with cold and snow. We get our fair share here in Maryland.

I love being outdoors. Well, I love being outdoors in fair weather. Cold, not so much. But not everyone agrees with me. I watched America Outdoors with Baratunde Thurston on PBS the other night, where he visited Maine, and the theme was embracing the cold. He spent time with people doing various things outside - all in the cold. Looked crazy to me, but everyone was happy. My sister lives in Maine and has not entirely embraced the cold, but her husband, who grew up there, has. And her kids. I remember what a novelty it seemed when I heard they did snowshoeing in PE. And my grandnephew was in an outdoor preschool where they spent most of their time outdoors, no matter what the weather was. I guess it's all what you're used to. 

As we're moving into cold weather, I am inspired to be like Mainers and spend more time outside in the cold (she says from the warmth of her home). I know that Ward will be a very willing participant. When we're out together, I say I'm freezing, and he says it's invigorating, with a happy smile. And if truth be told, I find that annoying sometimes (always.) 

But it's good for us to spend time outdoors. You've probably heard reports on studies saying so. I recently read one by the Max Planck Institute that says spending time outdoors is not only good for your mood but also for your brain function. And it wouldn't hurt me to have a boost in both areas. :) But I'll start tomorrow. Today is cold and rainy. I think I will have to work up to it.

In the meantime, Ward and I walked at an Audubon Bird sanctuary a couple of days ago when the weather was beautiful. This is my favorite kind of outdoor activity. Here are a few pictures from our walk.

The sanctuary encompasses 129 acres of various habitats
of woodlands, meadows, wetlands, and streams.

It was a sunny, clear day.

The sanctuary used to be an old farm, and the first trail we took was an old farm road.

I'm always amazed that the redbud tree has such little flowers but such big seed pods.

An old farm pond.

More evidence of the farm.

We couldn't figure out what kind of tree had this interesting trunk growth.

They had some pretty serious deterrents with the birdhouses
 to keep out interlopers and predators.

Next time, we need to take Aunt Martha, our local bird expert, with us. Our untrained eyes didn't see any birds, although we did hear some. But it was a pleasant outing, all the same. And I can already feel my brain working better. :)

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Until next time...